Friday, January 4, 2013

It's Never Lupus.

I think I'm going mad.  Like the old-fashioned, crazy-train mad.  My body has become a foreign thing to me lately.  I've been absent from my blog, and that's mostly because of how nutty things have been.

Those of you that know me or have stopped by here before are surely aware that I had a hysterectomy a couple months ago.  It was a big deal, made even bigger by my lack of pain tolerance or patience, and my general fraidy-pants type personality.  But I have emerged from the shadow of my former uterus-containing self, and am now a happily uterus-free woman no longer in need of tampons.  I cannot tell you how happy that makes me.  Sorry, Playtex, you've lost a loyal customer!

Anyway, since the surgery my body has completely gone awry.  The recovery from the surgery was longer than I anticipated, and lately I can't tell what's wrong with me.

After Thanksgiving, I was feeling pretty good.  I was four weeks post surgery, off the pain meds, and slowly getting some energy back.  That lasted about a week.  Then, during about the second week of December, I got smacked with a vicious fever.  It was pretty high, at one point I hit 103.  I had the fever for two days.  NO other symptoms.  No sniffles or sore throat.  Just that icky "holy shit fevers suck" feeling that you get with a fever.  Then it went away.  A couple days after that, all my muscles tightened up as if I had just completed an Ironman triathlon without stretching (which, I assure you, I did nothing of the sort--the triathlon, that is.  Not the lack of stretching.  But I didn't stretch either).  The sore muscles, from the tips of my fingers, my hands and feet, my arms and legs, lasted for I think more than a week, getting progressively worse.

I was starting to Google stuff, which is NEVER a good idea.  I had decided that I was at the beginning phases of Rheumatoid Arthritis, Fibromyalgia, some rare blood cancer, and possibly Lyme's disease.

And this is all while the hubby and I have been trying to plan a few days away for an extended date.

Then mom called me and invited my sister and I to an overnighter at a casino hotel up north.  Sounded like fun, and I hadn't let on to anybody the fact that I was slowly dying, so I figured I'd go.  Surprisingly, the morning we left my muscles felt a little less tight.  By the middle of the day, the pain was almost gone.  The swelling in my hands was better.  I felt looser.  Yay!

And then it was time to go to bed.  I went up to the room to go to bed around midnight.  As I was washing up, I noticed that my Entire.  Body.  Itched.  A burning, angry itch.  I chalked it up to the disgusting smoky air in the casino, and went to bed, scratching myself to sleep.

Woke up with a hideous rash.  It was on my neck, chest, arms, legs, belly.  Awesome.  So we went to breakfast and I got some Benadryl at the gift shop.  We decided maybe I ate something the night before that I was allergic to.

The Benadryl took the itch away, or maybe the fact that I won $200 playing penny machines took it away, but I felt a slight relief.  So we went home, and I was joking around that I must have Shingles.  But I was only acting like I was joking.  Because in my brain, I knew that this was just a symptom of the disease that was slowly killing me.

And then I got home.  The rash had spread up my neck, was burning my ears, and was creeping up my jawline.  So last night we went to Urgent Care.

Here's where it gets weird (ha!).  The doctor checks me out, and says it's an allergic reaction.  And that it's most likely from contact rather than food, but it definitely looked like an allergy.  He prescribed me Claritin, a steroid cream and a steroid pill (in case the rash continues to worsen).  I was so relieved!  Until we figured out what I'm most likely allergic to:

Christmas trees.

Folks, Christmas trees!  I LOVE Christmas, we always get a real tree.  And my tree was slowly killing me.  Crap!  But I was the one that put the lights in it.  Right before I got the fever.  And I was the one crawling under it to water it.  During the time I was getting the horrible muscle cramps.  And I was the one that took all the strings of lights off of it, undecorated it, and dragged it outside.  Right before we left for the casino.  So that definitely seems to be the culprit.  Augh!

So here I sit, all rashy and itchy, sticky from the gooey steroid cream, and wearing a scarf to hide my neck so I can go to the grocery store without people thinking I have leprosy.  Which I also considered that I might have for a while.  Hopefully stuff will start working.  Because if it doesn't, then I have to really get serious about finding out what kind of flesh-eating virus I have.  I'll let you all know.

5 comments:

  1. Well, that certainly is a little bit of miserable. So sorry. I do hope it is the trees. I'd hate to hear you have a flesh-eating disease right after you were blessed with no periods. :)

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  2. I'm glad it's not lupus; but man! Allergic to Christmas trees? That is some crazy bad luck.

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  3. Coop! Good to hear from you! I know. It was miserable. But I am a baby. I won't be steered away from my real tree, though. The kids and hubby will just have to do all the handling from now on. E, I know. Your official birthday plant is my Kryptonite. :(

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  4. Very interesting. We have a lot in common! We should go coffee sometime.

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  5. Kerri I would like that! Maybe you can be my Dr. House!

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